Future Tense: Rogue
by armesanNMU
Summary: Coldstone has always been a wild card. Now he has become one that Xanatos wishes to use to his advantage. Regardless of the consequences.


_Previously on Future Tense…_

**"I'm merely preparing my offenses. I failed my son once. I will not fail him again, and if you're not going to help me, then you're going to have to be eliminated," Xanatos threatened. "I will not let anything stand in my way this time!"**

**"He's clearly gone mad with grief," Hudson pointed out.**

**"We have to stop him," Brooklyn said definitively, looking back at the Eerie building, eyes narrowed in. "Before he destroys us all."**

_-It All Begins From Here_

**"There are forces at war within me," Coldstone muttered to Elisa, stealing glances at Goliath's stone figure behind her. "And until that battle is decided, no living gargoyle is safe. Tell my brother that I will return someday. If I can."**

_-High Noon_

**"Coldstone was created from pieces of different gargoyles," Desdemona explained to Goliath. "Now all of our souls are trapped inside."**

**"R.E.C.A.P was able to download the computer virus program through the taser line," Xanatos muttered, plugging the hard drive to the unit into his computer.**

**"This virus is the deadliest weapon I know of. It even defeated the mighty Coldstone."**

_-Legion_

_**The Himilayas**_

Under the cover of blowing snow and frigid mountain peaks, the Himalayas were one of the most isolated places on the planet. Gray clouds covered the sky, making it all the more difficult in determining snow from rock. The peaks rose high above the ground, some disappearing into the mist of clouds. Though beautiful, these remote mountains were among not only to most secluded, but the most dangerous in the world. Avalanches claimed the lives of scores of people, ranging from the most experienced climber to the most innocent child in an unlucky village.

Far from the villages and climbers, though, events went on unnoticed, and undisturbed. So the strangely out-of-placed gunfire attracted no additional attention. The roar of the guns was silenced quickly, as the shots had hit in just the right places to begin a small avalanche, which rolled down the side of the mountain, rolling over itself as it sped down the cliff in sheets. Settling shortly after on a relatively flat plane, the blowing snow subsided, settling amidst the remains of the avalanche.

Those responsible for instigating the avalanche quickly raced down the mountain, coming to a slowed halt at the base of the avalanche's path. Quite obviously misplaced, the two steel clan emerged from their own cloud of fine powdered snow, kicked up from the flare of their engines. They spent a few moments scanning the area from their aerial position before setting down and landing on the untouched snow. They'd barely set foot on the ground when they armed their laser cannons, which were grafted onto their right arms.

The one furthest forward began scanning the area, cannon aimed wherever it looked, searching for its intended prey. In the utter silence, the only noise to be heard was the wind howling through the caves and peaks, leading them to believe that their quarry had been buried under the avalanche. Which to a certain extent was true. The only thing they never considered was that to be buried was part of its plan.

Suddenly, the snow a few feet in front of the lead steel clan began to move, forming into a burrow trail of disturbed snow that was left behind as the burrower headed towards the steel clan. Reverting to its programmed reaction, the steel clan aimed at the moving burrow of snow, firing a series of shots at what it thought was the burrower, misjudging its speed and missing by a hair each time, until it was too close to shoot at with the cannon, and the burrower created a sort of sinkhole underneath the steel clan, pulling it down beneath the snow.

The remaining steel clan was left to the same eerie silence, but being a robot, and incapable of any emotions, it kept to its programmed task, searching for the burrower. Approaching the sinkhole where its comrade had been pulled under, the last steel clan leaned forward, letting its cannon lead the way, making it impossible for the burrower to get anywhere before it would shoot. Unfortunately for the steel clan, however, the burrower was smart, and threw out the dismembered leg of the steel clan it had destroyed, knocking the remaining robot back the few feet required to give him the room needed to attack.

Leaping from his tunnel beneath the avalanche, Coldstone emerged in a blast of snow and ice, charging immediately for the remaining steel clan, roaring defiantly as he tackled the robot.

"GAAAHHHHRRR!" Coldstone snarled, punching the steel clan in the face with his mechanical fist.

Metal against metal, the steel clan recovered quickly from the blow, and returned the strike with an equally powerful punch to the side of Coldstone's head. Being a fusion of flesh and machine, the cyborg gargoyle came back just as quickly, engaging the steel clan in hand to hand combat. Each shoving against the other's strength, they seemed at an equal level, until the tides turned with the arrival of a familiar red armored steel clan.

Hovering a safe distance away from both the fight as well as Coldstone's attention, the red steel clan clicked a button on its wrist, activating a shoulder gun and a targeting scope on his right side. Taking careful aim, he fired the gun, releasing a small, what looked like a Frisbee, until four spider-like hooks emerged from the sides.

The electrode bomb flew through the air, and within seconds, had found its intended target. Digging its claws into the shoulder of the steel clan robot, which was in a sort of shoving contest with Coldstone, the electrode emitted a huge power surge, overloading the systems of the steel clan, and starting a chain reaction which caused it to explode and destroy itself.

Coldstone, having been in contact with the robot when the surge hit, was struck with a similar, but less powerful surge, shorting out his main systems. The added damage from the exploding robot did not help either. Thrown back and damaged beyond functioning capabilities, Coldstone was knocked unconscious, and lay helpless in the snow as the red steel clan settled down at his side, looking down at the damaged gargoyle.

"You know, I knew there was a reason I installed that tracking device in you, Coldstone," Xanatos' voice muttered from within the safety of the red exo-suit. "And now, I know what it is."

_**Castle Wyvern  
South Tower**_

Within the confines of the castle's secluded towers, no one could tell what was going on. So the arrival of the damaged Coldstone went virtually unnoticed, as he'd arrived in a large anonymous crate. Now, many nights after his fight in the Himalayas, Coldstone found himself on a cold steel table, his body immobilized and his head disconnected from his motor functions, paralyzing him. Remaining attacked to his body by only a few cables, Coldstone had rarely felt anything but humiliation and anger since he'd woken up.

Off to his side, Xanatos was tinkering away on a computer, which had cables plugged into Coldstone's chest plate. Looking around him, Coldstone recognized the room as the one he'd woken up in when Demona and Xanatos first resurrected him. Caring little for his surroundings, Coldstone returned to the matter at hand.

"When will this humiliation end?!" Coldstone growled at Xanatos, teeth bared angrily. "And what are you trying to do me?"

Xanatos, finally looking up and directly at Coldstone, grinned. "Nothing much. Just refitting you with a new program. I made it myself. Should take care of your nasty split personality problem."

For once, Coldstone's hopes leapt, the thought of being freed from the plague of his multiple personalities making this seem all worth while. "You have means of subduing the evil one?" Coldstone wondered hopefully.

Xanatos looked at Coldstone, and then raised an eyebrow as if he was joking. "Subduing? Not quite, my boy. You see, I have no use, really, for any of your personalities," he said, finishing his typing and inserting a disk into the main computer. He grinned darkly at the cyborg, who had a nagging feeling that something bad was about to happen. "So, I'm just going to wipe them all out."

"NO!" Coldstone roared, moving his head from side to side, but unable to transfer any of that motion to his limbs. Paralyzed and helpless, he could only glare at Xanatos from his place on the table. "You can't! I won't let you!"

"Not to point out the obvious, Coldstone, but you're not really in a position to argue," Xanatos stated, pressing the execution key on his computer. "Don't worry. By the time I'm through with you, you won't remember any of this."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

_**Clock Tower  
23**__**rd**__** Precinct**_

Another night had passed in a long procession of uneventful nights. Tonight was no different. The tenants of the clock tower above the 23rd Precinct police station had decided tonight to stay indoors, and were milling about the tower, each to his or her own self.

Hudson, as on many nights in recent weeks, was watching T.V in his favorite and only recliner with Cagney on his lap. Lex occasionally looked up at the television set, but was primarily occupied with his laptop, while behind him in the kitchen area Broadway was attempting to install the microwave Matt had brought in for them, to replace the one that had shorted out some time ago. Jersey, the lone female gargoyle in the small clan, was sitting on a chair, her feet stretched on a crate that passed for a footrest, reading one of the many books she'd found in the downstairs library. That left Brooklyn, the young leader of the Manhattan clan, who was occupying his time by sitting in the doorway to the balcony, looking out at the nightscape of the city.

"Ack! There's nothin' good on T.V," Hudson snarled, flipping through the channels, and shifting around slightly, as to not wake Cagney.

Jersey, peeking out from behind her copy of "The Three Musketeers", smirked when she saw Hudson snarling at the T.V and flipping madly through the channels with the remote. "Now there's a complaint I miss," she quipped, returning to her book.

"Things have been awfully quiet lately," Lex admitted, not even bothering to look up from the screen of his computer.

"After the merger of Cyberbiotics and Xanatos Enterprises, there haven't been many things _to_ happen. Xanatos has been quiet ever since," Brooklyn added from the doorway above the others, having heard the conversation.

"And that's a bad thing, right?" Broadway wondered, pulling his head out from underneath the cupboard with a screwdriver and pliers in hand.

"It all depends on what he's doing to occupy his time," Brooklyn answered, without looking down, missing Matt coming up the stairwell to the tower.

"Hey guys, what's shakin'?" Matt wondered, asking a different version of his nightly question. Broadway, the one least absorbed in what he was doing, was the first to respond.

"Hey, Matt, you're just in time for breakfast!" the teal gargoyle grinned, indicating the microwave. "I think I got it working this time."

"Thanks, but no thanks. That soup from last night still glows in the dark," Matt said, turning down the offer.

"Aw…that hurts," Jersey muttered, pretending to pout, and hiding the grin behind the book cover.

"Sorry I can't stay very long tonight, guys. I've got patrol all night," Matt said, then adding at the end, "I've still got an opening for a partner if anyone wants to join me."

Surprisingly, Brooklyn got up from his sitting position, and began walking down the stairs. "I'll go with you," he said. "I could use a good flight."

Grinning, Matt looked around at the others. "Anyone else?"

Broadway and Jersey both shook their heads silently and Lex waved good-bye. Hudson was the only one to verbally decline with an, "I'm fine. You two go ahead."

Nodding, Matt turned to leave, and Brooklyn began heading back towards the doorway, only to be caught by Lex, who suddenly remembered something. "Hold on a sec!" He cried out, setting down his laptop and scurrying to his workbench. Searching the scattered pile of trinkets and electronic gizmos, Lex shoved several piles aside, until he found what he'd been looking for, hidden underneath a dissected remote control car and one of the video game controllers. "Here, Brooklyn. I want you and Matt to try something."

Handing a small silver earpiece and a tiny microphone to Matt, Lex grabbed a pair of rose colored sunglasses from his table, and handed them to Brooklyn.

"Uh…Lex?" Brooklyn asked, looking at the sunglasses like they were going to bite him.

"It's a long-range communicator. I took the system Elisa and Goliath had and upgraded it. It should reach up to fifty miles, and if there's no interference, it'll be clear as a bell," Lex explained. "It's a three-way radio connection. You can reach each other, but at the same time, it'll relay back here to us at the clock tower."

"But why sunglasses?" Brooklyn wondered, holding up the set of sunglasses.

"It's a new prototype I'm working on. I've been trying to copy the scanning systems used in the steel clan robots. So far I've managed to get a scanning array with full spectrum sensor capabilities, and it links whatever you see back here to my computer. Also," he said, clicking a button on the side frame of the glasses and watching as a microphone and earpiece flipped out of their resting positions on the frame's right side, "they function as a communicator. I figured they'd be easier to keep track of in the air rather than two separated pieces."

"Cool," Broadway gapped from behind Lex, watching him activate the communicator.

"You've been reading comic books again, haven't you?" Jersey wondered, putting down her book and getting up to take a closer look at the glasses.

"I just want you to try them out. Give them a whirl," Lex said, picking up his laptop. "With nothing to work with but scrap parts, it'll be interesting to see how well they work."

"A whirl?" Hudson wondered from his chair.

Jersey, standing behind him, leaned down on the chair to explain it to Hudson. "He means to test it," she said.

"Couldn't hurt," Matt agreed, fastening the microphone onto his trench coat collar and folding it underneath, and putting on the ear piece. "I'll see you outside," he said, walking back down the stairs and sealing the interior entrance to the tower.

"I'll be monitoring you two on the base communicator," Lex said, indicating his laptop. "The sensors on the glasses aren't working yet, but you should be able to use the scanners."

"Alright," Brooklyn said, putting the glasses on and fastening the earpiece over his right ear. Looking around the room quickly, Brooklyn was already back up the stairs and at the balcony door before he spoke again, not even facing the rest of the clan as he said, "Hudson, you're in charge until I get back."

Before anyone could argue the point, he was already off the balcony and in the air, quickly soaring out of sight. Jersey, after losing sight of him out the door, sighed lightly, and sat back down to continue on her book.

Broadway and Lex only nodded in agreement, seeing clearly what Brooklyn was doing. "Guess he doesn't trust us to handle a situation," Broadway grumbled, retreating back underneath the microwave.

"I don't see why not," Lex muttered, putting on a headset to listen to the communicators. "We're just as experienced as he is."

"Eh…comes with the job," Jersey added, idly turning the page.

Hudson silently looked at the remaining Trio and sighed, glancing up at where Brooklyn had flew off, sighing heavily, knowing full well what he was going to have to tell him when he got back.

Matt had long since lost track of Brooklyn, who he'd seen taking off from the balcony of the clock tower when he'd left. After nearly an hour into his patrol, and the lack of anything criminal to occupy his attention, Matt decided to try out Lex's new toy.

"You still up there big guy?" Matt said into the microphone on his collar.

There was a click of static in his earpiece, but only briefly before Brooklyn's voice came up behind it. "Right above you. About a mile above you. These scanning glasses work great! I can see the brand of coffee on your dashboard from up here."

"You hear that, Lex?" Matt wondered, testing the third way connection.

"Copy that," Lex's voice rang over the band. "You're probably at the scanner's limits right now, so try testing the range. Split up further. Try from different sides of town."

Matt was about to give Lex the okay, until his radio suddenly came to life, and Chavez's voice broke the so far uneventful streak Matt had been having.

_click_ "Attention all units. 211 in progress at Kang's Market, fifth and Madison." _click_

"Sorry, Lex," Matt said, hitting the brakes and turning around, simultaneously turning on the siren on the top of his car. "I'll have to take a rain check. C'mon Brooklyn!"

"Right behind you," Brooklyn said, wheeling around in the air to follow Matt's car as it sped down the road, siren wailing.

Five minutes after receiving the call, Matt arrived at the scene, which after a certain point, wasn't that hard to find, since about four other police cars had already responded to the call. Brooklyn, having flown down to a lower altitude to follow Matt, didn't have much of a problem finding the masses of flashing red and blue lights surrounding the small market.

"Looks like the party's all here," Brooklyn quipped, landing on a building across the street from Kang's.

"You aren't kidding," Matt agreed, getting out of the car and surveying the scene.

Several cops were situated behind their open car doors with their guns drawn; others were back behind the line, some on radios, others talking to each other, while others still were standing around in a state of confusion. Matt, the only detective on the scene, glanced over at the ally next to the market, only to find several other officers positioning themselves to block any escape routes for the perpetrators inside. Suddenly, Matt noticed a familiar face among the blue and black uniforms, and casually walked up beside him.

"Hey, Morgan," Matt said, coming to a stop beside Morgan's car. "What's going on?"

Morgan, situated halfway between the back of his open car door and the driver's seat, was keeping one eye on the store and talking on the radio to dispatch before Matt had arrived, but when he heard the detective's voice, he managed to put down the radio.

"Nothin' good, Bluestone," he sighed, shaking his head before looking up to Matt. "You know those monsters they keep talking about on T.V?"

"You mean the tabloid gargoyles?" Matt wondered, putting on his 'this-is-a-joke-right' look. "What about them?"

Morgan, usually one to dismiss the gargoyle urban legend, was unnervingly serious about this, which suddenly set off the warning bells in Matt's head. "We've got witnesses saying that one of them is inside that building with hostages."

"WHAT?!"

Matt had to clamp a hand over his ear, both in pain and to keep Morgan from hearing where Brooklyn's voice had come from, though the static and crackled voice managed to get out before he could do anything about it. Morgan, being no idiot and hearing the mystery voice come out of no where, eyed Matt suspiciously, making direct eye contact with the detective. "What was that?"

Matt fumbled with his words to come up with a decent cover, his brain working overtime to come up with a convincing lie. "Uh…what…do you mean hostages? Has it made any ransom yet? And…how exactly do we know it's one of these gargoyle-things? Could be just some kid in a costume."

"Must be one strong kid then," Morgan chuckled to himself. "We had a guy in the vents, but he was thrown out a few minutes later. Literally _thrown_ out. Guy was panicked, said it was some sort of robot monster."

"Robot?" Brooklyn asked Matt, this time in a normal voice. "Is the guy still here?"

"Is he still here?" Matt asked idly, pretending he didn't hear Brooklyn.

"Yeah," Morgan said, pointing a finger over towards one of the other cars. "He's over there. O'Reily. Good luck talkin' to him."

"I'll need it," Matt grumbled under his breath, going over towards the indicated car.

The man they sought was sitting on the trunk of one of the police cars, with his head and right arm wrapped in bandages. The faint traces of blood were showing through the arm's bandage, and his head was resting on his balled up fists, but he was conscious.

"Officer O'Reily?" Matt asked, leaning down to look the man in the eyes directly. The officer lifted his head at the sound of his name, panicked eyes meeting Matt's.

"What do you want, Bluestone? You want to laugh too?" O'Reily wondered coldly.

"I just wanted to ask you a few questions about what you saw in there. Just give it to me straight," Matt said sternly.

O'Reily stared at Matt for a few seconds, before taking a deep breath and speaking again. "I went in through the vents in the back of the building. Was supposed to take him by surprise, but…"

"But what?"

"…that wasn't a man in there. It was…a monster. Huge, blue and red thing, had metal wings, and one red eye and one huge horn comin' out of its head…it grabbed me, and the next thing I knew, I was rolling on the ground outside."

"Horns?" Brooklyn muttered mostly to himself, though Matt heard through the earpiece. "Sounds to me like our old pal Coldstone is back."

"Did you say Coldstone?" Lex chirped in over the band.

"Yeah," Brooklyn muttered, still thinking this through. "But, from what Elisa said, he'd gone off somewhere to stop causing trouble. What's he doing back in New York?"

"Nothing good," Matt muttered over his shoulder to no one, walking back to his car by Morgan.

"I'll take a look overhead," Brooklyn suggested, hopping up to the lead of the building he was on. "See if I can find a way in."

"Be careful," Matt advised, casually looking up to where the shadowy gargoyle was standing. "We don't know how many people are still in there with your buddy."

Without acknowledging Matt, Brooklyn leapt off the building and soared the short distance over to the roof of Kang's market. Circling from several hundred feet above, the scanners on the glasses were easily able to find the hole in the roof, where the small excuse for a skylight had been freshly broken through.

"Hey Lex? These glasses wouldn't happen to have x-ray vision, would they?" Brooklyn wondered, trying to see into the store itself and find Coldstone.

"They're a prototype, remember?" Lex snarled, mildly annoyed by the question. "It's on the list with heat vision and a can opener."

"Really?" That had been Broadway in the background at the tower.

"No, not really," Lex snapped at his older brother, his voice muffled when he turned to talk to Broadway.

Brooklyn sighed, ignoring the argument. "Guess I'll have to do this the old fashioned way."

Collapsing his wings, Brooklyn dove down towards the roof, flaring them to avoid colliding with the rooftop and to slow his dive and land. With the cover of darkness, and the blessing of a cloudy night, none of the police officers, not even Matt, were able to see him land, or sneak around on the rooftop towards the open hole.

Peering down the open hole enough to see inside, but not be seen, Brooklyn could easily see a group of three people cowering behind the check-out counter, two of which looked like they worked there, and the third with a bag of groceries. A glance to the right revealed the broken display window where the officer had been thrown through, and to the left, the interior of the store, which, at the moment, was in shambles. The aisles were a mess, the contents of the shelves having been knocked to the floor during some earlier panic, and that which was not on the floor was crushed or smashed off to the side, along with a mangled shelf unit. All in all, it resembled what Brooklyn would expect from Coldstone's more violent personality, but one important thing was missing. Coldstone.

"See anything?" Matt's voice wondered through the earpiece. Brooklyn, forced to the remain mostly on the roof, since the lights in the market were still on, shook his head in confusion.

"There are three people inside, all behind the check-out."

"Any sign of Coldstone?"

"That's the weird part," Brooklyn grumbled, scanning the inside of the store again. "It looks like he was here, and these people act like everyone else who's seen one of us, but he's not inside."

"What do you mean he's not inside?" Lex wondered, hearing that last part. "Look again."

Looking in closer, and practically sticking his entire head inside the building, Brooklyn could see the entirety of the store, but as before, he saw no sign of Coldstone. However, with his attention focused on the inside of the store, Brooklyn never noticed the other occupant on the roof.

Creeping up behind him, the shadowed figure made almost no sound, save a muffled whirring noise every time it took a step, but Brooklyn more intent on listening for any incoming conversation on the communicator, didn't hear it until it was nearly on top of him.

"I don't see…" Brooklyn began, but stopped suddenly, finally hearing the odd whirring behind him. His brain had just begun connecting the dots when the attack began. Turning to look over his shoulder, Brooklyn only saw a blur of blue-gray and red before two huge cybernetic arms lunged at him, grabbing him around the middle and easily lifting him up off the ground. "GAHHHH!" The immense strength pinned Brooklyn's arms and wings against his body, and began to apply increasingly painful pressure to his rib cage, leaving only his legs and tail free to thrash about.

Instinct took over, registering faster than thought that the arms and wings were useless, that the tail was still free, and with one deafening crack, Brooklyn's tail snapped upwards like a whip, and slapped the glowing red eye behind him. However, instead of dropping him, Brooklyn felt the arms release slightly and shift to a position taken more for throwing than holding.

_Oh no…_

One step and one thrust sent Brooklyn crashing through what was left of the skylight and the frame supporting it, clipping his feet and right arm against the actual brick roof as he sailed through, connecting with the ground far too quickly to have even hoped using his wings to stop the fall.

_CRAAASSSHHH!_

"OOF!"

The blood red gargoyle slammed into the linoleum floor tiles, almost hard enough to jar them loose from the tar connecting them to the actual floor, and certainly enough to leave a huge dent. Rolling over painfully, Brooklyn dug his talons into the flooring to anchor himself as he attempted to get to his feet, trying to block out the pain from the sizable bruise he would be getting before the night was over. Shortly after, Brooklyn's assailant jumped down after him, landing next to where Brooklyn's head had been. With the addition of the fluorescent lights, it wasn't hard to guess who his attacker was. Brooklyn had already figured it out.

"Coldstone," Brooklyn hissed, glaring up at the cyborg gargoyle. "It is you."

Hearing the new voice, the young Korean boy in one of the market aprons, nearest to the edge of the counter, peeked over the ledge, trying to find their supposed rescuer. The woman next to him had to clamp his hand over his mouth to keep him from screaming when he saw Brooklyn lying on the floor, so as not to draw the attention of the two 'monsters' to them. With luck, they would fight each other and forget about the three of them in hiding.

Coldstone, recognizing Brooklyn after a moment, grinned sadistically. "So good to see you again, friend."

No sooner had he finished speaking, Coldstone drew back one foot and before Brooklyn could react, kicked him in the chest hard enough to send him flying backwards, and into one of the glass refrigerator doors, shattering it and jarring most of the milk behind the door loose.

Half-sitting, half-laying in the frame of what once had been the door, and covered in glass, Brooklyn sat there for a few seconds, shaking off the shock, shoving the pain aside, and picking himself up, albeit weakly. Once back on his feet, Brooklyn shook the remaining glass out of his hair, forcing himself to ignore the pounding headache threatening to come on, and glared at Coldstone as they started circling one another, each ready to or thwart an attack.

"So," Brooklyn hissed darkly, crouching slightly into a predatorial position as he stepped over a fallen array of cereal boxes. "I take it I'm dealing with evil personality number three…"

Again, Coldstone grinned. "That you are my…" Suddenly, Coldstone stalled, halting their dance around the destroyed store, and grabbed his head in both hands, shaking it uncertainly. "No, no you're not…it's wrong…all wrong! We're not…Be quiet! They'll never understand! We must take them now!!"

Perplexed by the inner debate with himself, Brooklyn's eyes were wide with confusion, but when Coldstone suddenly lunged at him, Brooklyn managed to sidestep the attack, causing Coldstone to sail past him, and slam head-first into another refrigerator door, shattering that one much the same as Brooklyn had done before. Keeping his eyes on Coldstone, and expecting another attack Brooklyn almost didn't see the people behind him peeking up from behind the counter and watching the fight.

Coldstone, recovering quickly, angrily got to his feet, and whirled around, growling angrily at Brooklyn, but suddenly pausing and looking past the red gargoyle. "Finish them now!" he roared, arming the laser cannon on his right arm. Seeing Coldstone arm his weapons, Brooklyn glanced over his shoulder behind him, seeing the people getting up to see what was going on. It suddenly dawned on him that Coldstone was aiming for them.

"NO!" Brooklyn shouted to them. "Get down!"

The two boys and the woman, too shocked that Brooklyn was talking to them to move, looked at him like a deer in headlights, and then at Coldstone behind him, who had a cannon aimed towards their hiding place. Reacting on instinct, Brooklyn lunged at Coldstone, tackling him to the ground just as he fired, so the shot ended up harmlessly obliterating a display of pickle jars. Clasping one set of talons around Coldstone's throat and the other around his cannon arm to keep him pinned to the ground, Brooklyn turned again to look over his shoulder at the boys and woman.

"Go…now! While he's down! I can't hold him…for long!" Brooklyn growled through clenched teeth, using all of his strength to keep the angry cyborg pinned, which was no easy task, even for a gargoyle.

Yelling something in Korean to the younger boy and woman, the teenage boy grabbed the woman and the younger boy and lead them to the front door, running as fast as humanly possible. Coldstone, seeing them escape, roared angrily and threw Brooklyn off of him, quickly getting to his feet and running after them as far as the end of the destroyed aisles.

"No! Stay where you are!" Aiming his laser cannon, the strange stall came again, as his arm began to pull back in a jerking motion, as though something were playing tug-of-war with his arm. "You can't do this…we aren't supposed to…Since when has it mattered?!"

With Coldstone distracted, the three people managed to make it out safely, which only angered him further once he stopped talking to himself. Turning around to glare at Brooklyn, Coldstone's eyes narrowed in dangerously. "YOU!"

Lunging at the crimson gargoyle, Coldstone's mind never thought about the abnormally calm and determined look on Brooklyn's face, until Brooklyn's defensive attack had already kicked in. Falling back just as Coldstone would've hit him, Brooklyn's talons grabbed the metal chest plate and pulled Coldstone down with him, roundhouse throwing Coldstone behind him to prevent the cyborg from falling on top of him. The throw sent Coldstone crashing into a few shelves of food and then into a freezer door, where he landed upside down in a pile of glass from what was once the door.

Getting back up to his feet before Coldstone recovered, Brooklyn turned to the cyborg, hoping to end this before the police decided to get brave and start shooting. Coldstone may be more than slightly bulletproof, but Brooklyn, unfortunately was not.

"Coldstone, listen to me. I'm your friend," Brooklyn said, holding out both hands in front of him to show he had no intention of attack. Taking a step closer, Brooklyn stopped when Coldstone righted himself and got himself up to a crouching position, as opposed to the upside-down position he'd been in before. "Take control! Don't let the evil personality control you!"

Surprisingly, after getting to his feet, Coldstone didn't attack, and only shook his head slightly. "No…it's not…you' don't understand. Xanatos…"

"Xanatos?" Brooklyn cut in. "He did this to you?"

"Said…he had a remedy…could fix my mind…but it was wrong…all wrong…He doesn't understand! He'll destroy us! We have no other choice! Yes we do! Take him now! NO! I will not yield!"

Brooklyn, perplexed by Coldstone's behavior, raised an eye ridge in confusion, unable to actually respond. Coldstone, it seemed, had forgotten that Brooklyn was even there, and was shaking his head violently from side to side, both hands clamped over his ears as if to block out the conversation he was having with himself.

"…….Brook…you…come in…are….okay…goi-…on…"

So caught up watching Coldstone, unsure whether or not to help him or slap him, Brooklyn almost didn't hear the voices coming over the communicator band. The glasses, having fallen off during his initial fall through the skylight, had been thoroughly trashed. One lens was missing completely, the other was cracked badly, and a piece in the corner had fallen out, the frames were either crushed or bent, and the communicator was bent backwards, but it was still working…somewhat.

Picking up the glasses near his foot, Brooklyn attempted to put them back on, at least enough so that he could respond to whoever was trying to reach him.

"Lex? That you? I can't hear you," Brooklyn said, bending the mic back so it fit.

"Brooklyn? You okay in there?"

That was Matt's voice. Garbled and static-filled, but Matt's, none-the-less. "Matt! I'm in here with Coldstone," Brooklyn said, looking back up at Coldstone, who was still busy arguing with himself.

"I know the hostages are out here with us, they said you tried to attack them when they escaped."

"Typical," Brooklyn muttered.

"You may want to wrap up your family chat in there. We've got the S.W.A.T team out here ready to blow you two to kingdom come."

"Thanks for the tip," Brooklyn groaned, glancing back out the shattered windows, before turning his attention back to Coldstone, who was in the middle of trying to force his laser cannon closed.

"I will not destroy him!" Coldstone snarled while attempting to force the cannon closed with one hand while the cannon fought to stay armed. "We have no choice! But this is wrong…we must to survive! NO! WE DON'T!"

Brooklyn, watching the debate from a relatively safe distance, sighed, his mind trying to formulate a plan of escape. Suddenly, something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Lying on the ground, Brooklyn absentmindedly picked up a steel beam from amidst the rubble that had once been Kang's market, and then looked up at Coldstone. Obviously, he wasn't going to be able to get Coldstone out of there in the state he was in right now, so, the rather simple yet extremely violent method seemed most appropriate.

"Sorry about this, Coldstone," Brooklyn sighed, raising the steel beam over his shoulder like a baseball bat. "But you'll thank me later."

_**Clock Tower  
23**__**rd**__** Precinct**_

It had been nearly an hour since Lex had lost contact with Brooklyn. Matt was still on-line, and said that he told Brooklyn to get out of the market before the S.W.A.T team went in, but after that, no one at the tower knew whether or not he made it, nor did they know what had happened with the supposed Coldstone sighting. All they could do was wait and hope.

Lex was still on the communicator band with Matt, who was trying to sort out the mess at Kang's market, but he was having no luck reaching Brooklyn. The others, in the meantime, were all standing watch for signs of their young leader's return out on the balcony.

"Any luck, Lex?" Jersey wondered, peering inside at the olive colored gargoyle perched at his workbench. Shaking his head enough so Jersey could see, Lex remained vigilant at his post, muttering something about alligators in the sewers and getting an agreement from Matt. Sighing, the young gold female turned towards the city, searching for the slightest hint as to where Brooklyn was.

"Be patient, lass," Hudson said, sensing Jersey's unease.

"Speak for yourself," Jersey muttered under her breath, eyeing Hudson from out of the corner of her eye.

"Jersey's right. I'm getting tired of just waiting to see if Brooklyn disappears too!" Broadway jumped in. "We should be out looking for him."

"And get ourselves lost too?" Hudson wondered. Broadway had no comeback for that, and only crossed his arms across his chest angrily and turned his back to the elder gargoyle. "If the lad's alive, he'll be back."

"'If he's alive'…you make it sound very comforting, you know that?" Jersey grumbled sarcastically, and more to herself than to Hudson.

Broadway, listening to Jersey's snide remark, sighed sadly, fearing the worst, and leapt up on the banister, making the short jump to one of the outside parapets where they usually slept. Without the light from the clock tower so close, it made it easier for Broadway to see the buildings and people down below their tower home. It also made him the first to see the shadowy figure obstructing one side of a nearby office building, which was still lit, and the fact that it was gliding on a familiar set of wings.

"Brooklyn!" Broadway cried out, a grin spreading across his previously downcast face. "He's back! I see him!"

"What?" Jersey gapped, racing to the edge of the balcony to get a clearer look. Squinting to make out the quickly approaching figure, thin shades of dark red became visible, and a grayish-white mane of hair between two swept back horns. "Lex! Get out here! It's Brooklyn!"

"What? What's going on?" Lex yelped, scurrying out of the tower, still wearing his headset. "What about Brooklyn?"

"Here he comes now," Hudson smirked, and then glared at Jersey. "And so ends your first lesson in faith."

Jersey, grudgingly, muttered something inaudible under her breath, but none-the-less, it earned a satisfied grin from Hudson, who turned to welcome Brooklyn back. Gathered out on the balcony, they made way when Brooklyn came in for a landing, as just before then, they had seen the unconscious figure he had with him.

With the added weight of Coldstone, not to mention the bruises from his previous battle with him, Brooklyn's landing was not his best, but it was a landing, never-the-less. Dropping Coldstone to the balcony ground before hitting the ground himself, Brooklyn stumbled to land on his feet, but managed without tripping over his own talons.

"So it really is him, then," Hudson muttered, gazing down at Coldstone.

"We were worried, what happened to you?" Jersey wondered, going up to Brooklyn, but suddenly stopping and then looking him over with a raised eye ridge. "You look terrible."

"Thanks," Brooklyn said sarcastically, going back over to Coldstone and the others. "He broke into a market and started shooting up the place."

"Yeah, but…how'd you get him here?" Lex wondered, checking Coldstone over for any sort of damage. Everything checked out alright, except for when he came to the left side of Coldstone's head. "How'd this dent get here?"

Sheepishly, Brooklyn cleared his throat, innocently scratching the back of his neck. "Oh…that…well it's kind of a long story."

"Looks like someone hit him on the head with a bat," Broadway blurted out.

"Okay, maybe not that long of a story…"

"It doesn't matter…what matters is why is Coldstone here at all?" Hudson cut in.

Getting back the matter at hand, Brooklyn nodded. "He mentioned something about Xanatos. I figure that's probably how he got here. As for why, I'm still working on that, but we may have a bigger problem than that."

"Such as?" Lex wondered.

Brooklyn, eyeing his younger brother blandly, reached behind his back, and tossed Lex the remains of the communicator glasses. Lex instinctively caught it, and dropped his jaw when he saw the remains of his invention.

"What did you do to my glasses?!" Lex shrieked, looking at the destroyed glasses. "They look like truck ran over them."

"That was from when Coldstone jumped me on the roof," Brooklyn said. "And when he wasn't busy attacking me, he tried to shoot the people in the store, and when that got boring, he decided to have a conversation with himself."

"Well, it's obvious that the evil personality is in control, otherwise he wouldn't have tried to kill you," Lex snarled, protectively holding the destroyed glasses at his side.

"I don't think so, Lex. Something is wrong with his head, and whatever it is, I think it may be a little more serious than a simple split personality disorder this time."

"Well, like what?" Jersey wondered, looking down at Coldstone, who for the moment seemed perfectly normal for a cyborg gargoyle.

Brooklyn, having vented out most of his frustration on Lex and the glasses issue, looked over at Jersey, while thinking how to explain Coldstone's behavior. "I don't know. It seemed to me that all his personalities were kind of…blurred together. Like something caused them to malfunction, so now not any real one personality is in control."

"That's impossible," Lex said. "From what I can tell, the operating program Demona and Macbeth installed in him was basic. It probably only functions with one personality. That's how Coldstone was designed. He wasn't made for multiple souls to control him. So for all three to be in there at once…"

"…means that whatever Xanatos did to him allows all three to function as one," Jersey interrupted, figuring the puzzle out. "They've merged."

"But not completely," Brooklyn nodded. "There's still some individual characteristics and tendencies. It's an incomplete merge."

"So it might be reversible, right?" Broadway asked hopefully. He turned to Lex. "Can you separate them, or something?"

Lex sighed, looking at Coldstone. "I can try," he said opening the chest compartment on the right side. "But first, I've got to find out what Xanatos did to him. Maybe then I can find a way to reverse it. If that's even possible."

Their conversation was abruptly interrupted when the previously unconscious Coldstone suddenly began to stir, coupled with a few groans as he started moving. Brooklyn, fearing that Coldstone may attempt to lash out at them, turned to Lex. "Whatever you plan to do, Lex, do it now. He's coming to, and I have no idea how well he'll take to being here."

Lex nodded. "You guys hold him down while I try scanning his hardware."

Hudson, having been silent for most of the previous conversation, chirped up, looking expectantly in Lex's direction. "And suppose he doesn't like the idea of being held against his will?"

Lex, almost halfway into the tower, looked back at the others. "I don't know. Try talking to him. Keep him calm. Whatever it takes. I've got to find out what's going on in there if we're going to help him." His voice fading as he disappeared inside the tower, the remaining four looked down at Coldstone, who was sitting up to the point where he was using his elbows for support.

"Alright," Brooklyn said, looking around at the others, and keeping his voice low enough so that Coldstone couldn't hear. "We try keeping him calm, but any sign of panic and we grab him. Broadway, Hudson, you take a leg. Jersey, you and I will take the arms." Then louder, into the tower he added, "And Lex, please make this quick."

Coldstone, in the middle of rubbing his head, lurched up to a sitting position, and finally opened his eyes, looking around him at the blurred, yet strangely familiar faces. "Ungh…" he moaned. "What….where…"

"Don't worry," Broadway said, kneeling down to Coldstone's level, so he could look him straight in the eye. "You're among friends."

"My head…" Coldstone muttered. "…can't remember…where…am I?"

"You're at the clock tower," Jersey said softly, almost soothingly. "Do you remember the clock tower? It's our home. We are your clan, remember?"

"You…I don't remember you…" Coldstone said, looking at Jersey strangely.

Flinching slightly, Jersey mentally slapped herself. Of course he didn't remember her; she'd arrived in Manhattan after Coldstone had disappeared. Goliath told her about Coldstone before he left with Elisa, and Lex and Matt had shown her pictures, but they had never met face to face.

"I…uh…I'm new here. Like you…these are my friends. They helped me," Jersey amended, indicating the other three gargoyles behind her. Following her hand, Coldstone looked up at the others, almost as though he were drawing on some lost memory. "My name is Jersey. This is Broadway, Hudson, and Brooklyn. Remember?" She pointed to each of the other gargoyles respectively.

"You…" he said, pointing a metallic talon at Hudson. "You're my mentor…where…what happened to Goliath? Why isn't my brother here?" Coldstone suddenly jerked forward, shifting his weight to get to his feet, but was caught as he began to fall forward from the sudden movement.

"Easy there," Brooklyn said, catching Coldstone by the shoulders. "Goliath…uh, he isn't here right now."

"Can you tell us what happened, lad? What do you remember?" Hudson asked, placing a comforting hand on Coldstone's shoulder.

Coldstone glanced back at Hudson before closing his eyes, his mind piecing together the jigsaw puzzle that had become his memory. "I remember…the mountains. I was attacked. By robots, and then there was Xanatos. After that…nothing. I remember nothing," he sighed, opening his eyes. He looked at Brooklyn in front of him. "I remember you. We…there was a struggle…and then, I came here."

Brooklyn grinned sheepishly. "Uh, yeah. Something like that."

"Well, at least we know his memories are in tact. That's one good sign."

As one, the group on the balcony turned towards Lex, who was coming out of the tower with his laptop and a cable in hand. Coldstone, recognizing the young gargoyle, actually smiled.

"Lexington. I was wondering where…" Coldstone began, but paused suddenly, his smiled fading instantly when his eyes landed on the link cable in Lex's hands. Suddenly, his mind began filling in the blanks between Xanatos and the tussle with Brooklyn at Kang's market. Turning around to face Lex head on, Coldstone tensed up considerably. "What is that?"

Lex, looking at his computer, stood there for a moment in confusion, before realizing Coldstone was looking at the link cable. "What, this?" Lex wondered, holding up the cable. "Nothing. I'm just going to try and scan your hardware. See where the problem is. That way I can fix you." Then, in a more wary voice, Lex glanced at Coldstone out of the corner of his eye. "Why, is something wrong?"

"Keep that thing away from me," Coldstone demanded, backing away from Lex, and shielding himself with one arm. "I don't want it anywhere near me!"

"Calm down, lad," Hudson cooed. "It's just one of the lad's contraptions. It won't bite ye."

"No…you don't understand," Coldstone insisted, backing up further, until his back hit the stone railing, but even then, his feet kept scraping against the stone floor in a vain attempt to back up even further. "I won't go through this again!"

Jersey, seeing the edge of panic setting in, got to her feet and took a moderate attack stance, though attempted to still use words to calm him. "Coldstone…" she said warningly.

"It's okay," Broadway insisted, offering his hand towards Coldstone. "Nothing's going to hurt you. We just want to help."

Lex, attempting to approach Coldstone, took another step towards the frightened cyborg, the cable and computer still in hand. Coldstone, seeing Lex's movement, began to panic even more.

"NO! Stay back! I'm warning you!"

"I think we're losing him, guys," Brooklyn warned.

"It's just a cable," Lex assured Coldstone. Inserting one end into the port on the laptop, Lex demonstrated its harmlessness. "See? It doesn't hurt."

"DON'T COME NEAR US WITH THAT!!" Coldstone roared, extending his right arm and arming his laser cannon.

"Look out lad!" Hudson yelled, pushing Lex out of the way before Coldstone could fire at the smaller gargoyle.

"Grab him now!" Brooklyn ordered, leaping down and tackling the laser cannon to the ground, applying his body weight to help pin down the arm. Moments later, Jersey performed a similar move to his other arm, while Broadway and Hudson each grabbed one of the thrashing legs and pinned them to the ground. In a full swung panic mode now, Coldstone instinctively attempted to thrash his way free, all the while yelling.

"Stop! What are you doing? What have I ever…" he started staying, but then paused momentarily. Brooklyn, having faced Coldstone earlier, knew what was happening. "…no, stop it! Not again! I'll have your heads for this! No…I can't…we mustn't…stop whining!"

"I see what you mean," Broadway said to Brooklyn, watching Coldstone begin arguing with himself again. "They're all battling for control at once."

Lex, picking up the equipment he'd dropped when Hudson shoved him, slid over between Brooklyn and Hudson, blowing any invisible dust off of the other end of the link cable. "Hang on, Coldstone," Lex said, peering inside the opened chest compartment to find the attachment. "We're just going to take a peek inside you. Nothing to worry about, we'll be done before you know it."

Having worked on Coldstone before, Lex needed only search for a moment before he found the right connection, and plugged the link cable into the port inside of Coldstone. Unfortunately, Coldstone didn't seem to understand what Lex was trying to do.

"What…no! Keep that thing out of me!" He snarled, feeling Lex plug the computer cable into him. "I don't want anything to do with this! Get away from us!"

"Well, whatever Xanatos did to him has permanently scarred him against computers," Jersey remarked sarcastically, practically laying on Coldstone's arm to keep him pinned.

"NO! You don't understand! I told you they wouldn't! This is our only chance! They only want to help…no, destroy us!"

With one mighty thrash, Coldstone's arm overpowered Jersey, knocking her head against the banister hard enough so that she loosened her grip just enough so he could pull it free. With one arm free, he only had to bite talons into Broadway's back before he was able to kick the huge teal behemoth off of him, and with one side of him free, he simply rolled over and delivered a powerful kangaroo kick to Hudson's side, which threw him back into Lex and Brooklyn, and into the stone banister.

"OOF!" they simply grunted, unable to utter more before they hit stone. Freed from his captives, Coldstone lurched up to a standing position, dragging with him the computer, which only lasted until he tore out the link cable and tossed it to the ground. Leaping up to the ledge, Coldstone's wings clanked loudly as they spread out in preparation for flight.

"Coldstone! Wait!" Brooklyn yelled, getting up from underneath Lex and Hudson.

"No! I won't let you do it again!" He snarled, glaring at Brooklyn and the others as they got up and prepared to grab him again. "Stay away from us!"

Leaping nimbly into the air to avoid a swipe at his feet from Broadway and Jersey, Coldstone's jet engine flared to life, carrying him off into the night and leaving the safety of the clock tower.

"Well that worked out spectacularly," Jersey groaned sarcastically.

"Something happened to him back with Xanatos. And if we're going to help him, we're going to have to find out what. Which means we're going to have to get back into the castle," Lex said, picking up the remains of his laptop.

"And somehow I don't think Coldstone's going to cooperate with us right now," Jersey said, deadpan.

"Someone's got to go after him. He's already attacked those people at the market, who knows what he'll do now in the state he's in," Hudson observed, looking out where Coldstone had gone.

"Yeah," Brooklyn agreed darkly. "Lex, you and I will go and check out the old castle. See what we can find up there. The rest of you will tail Coldstone. Keep him out of trouble, try to get him back here."

"Right!" Broadway said.

"Uh…Hudson, you take the lead on this," Brooklyn said, turning quickly to Lex to avoid looking at Jersey and Broadway. "Come on, Lex."

Without a word of argument, Lex took off after Brooklyn, who had already gone off towards the direction of the Eerie building. Jersey, raising an eye ridge in Brooklyn's direction, glanced at Broadway as she leapt up to the ledge and flared her wings.

"Am I the only one sensing a pattern here?" she wondered jokingly to Broadway, who shrugged, not getting the joke, and followed her as she dove off in the direction of Coldstone's escape. Hudson, wordlessly, followed, glancing out of the corner of his eye in the direction Brooklyn and Lex had disappeared.

_**Eerie Building  
Castle Wyvern**_

At the speed they took, it didn't take Brooklyn and Lex very long to reach the Eerie building, and it wasn't until they came within sight of the building that they moved to a higher elevator, clearing well above even the tallest North tower on the castle, to avoid detection from the cameras they knew Xanatos had planted around the premises.

"Those glasses would come in handy about now," Brooklyn muttered, straining to see the details of the castle through the hazy clouds.

Lex rolled his eyes, and subconsciously groaned at the mention of the glasses. "Yeah, and just remember who broke them."

Ignoring the comment, Brooklyn swooped in lower, clearing the bottom layer of clouds and coming in on the south side of the castle, being careful to remain a safe distance from where he thought the cameras were. Lex followed close behind.

"Look for anything out of the ordinary. Something that wasn't here the last time," Brooklyn said, scanning below him at the castle towers.

Lex, following Brooklyn's lead, kept a majority of his attention on the castle, searching for anything that might help, while in the back of his mind he kept an eye out for cannons, steel clan, or any other defense mechanism Xanatos had armed the castle with. As the two of them passed over the south tower, something actually did catch Lex's eye. Doing a quick double take, Lex noticed that the once solid roof had a few holes torn through the shingles, and charred laser marks surrounding the frayed edges.

"Something like that?" Lex wondered, pointing to the Swiss cheese tower roof. Brooklyn, following Lex's finger, saw the same thing.

"It's a start," he said, wheeling around and judging the distance back to the tower. Collapsing his wings and making a quick dive through the cover of the clouds, aiming for a straight shot through the largest hole and into the tower itself to avoid any detection from the cameras, followed by a smaller green rocket behind him.

Once inside the tower and clear of the confining roof, both flared their wings to stop, coming to a gentle glide down to the ground, amidst the destruction that put the damage on the roof to shame.

"Whoa," Brooklyn whistled, looking around at the destroyed room, his voice echoing off of the walls. "Someone should fire the decorator."

Mostly the entirety of the room was covered in black charred laser marks, the stone scorched from its normal slate and tan-gray color. One side of the room was virtually empty, leaving clear entry way from the door that lead to the staircase down, the only equipment nearby being a small computer console, which had been shattered beyond repair. On the other side of the room, opposite the doorway, was the rest of what was left of the equipment that had once been stored here, shattered computer screens and torn consoles baring frayed and sliced wires. A table was situated in the center of the room, the edges lined with what once had been restraints, but had been broken.

"Definitely Coldstone's handiwork," Lex muttered, lifting up a stray piece of burned console and examining it.

"Try looking for anything salvageable," Brooklyn said, exploring the room himself as Lex began digging through the remains of the equipment to try and find anything he could use. "And keep an eye open for trouble. It was too easy to get in here without him seeing, and as far as I'm concerned, it's too quiet."

"Yeah," Lex agreed, setting his battered laptop on the console nearest to what he suspected to be the main computer. "Last time we were here he had automated defenses and steel clan all over the place."

"And where exactly _is_ Xanatos?"

_**Downtown Manhattan**_

On the other side of Manhattan, the rest of the clan had easily caught up with Coldstone, but were hanging back, not getting too close to him, to avoid sending him into a panic again, lagging behind just enough to keep him in sight. From what they could see, he had calmed down since his outburst at the tower, but was still occasionally heard yelling at himself, as he flew around the city like a lost tourist.

"I don't get it," Broadway suddenly blurted out, breaking the silence between the three of them. "Why would Xanatos kidnap Coldstone and then let him go when he was still broken? It makes no sense."

Jersey, beside Broadway, nodded in agreement. " I know what you mean," she said, biting her lower jaw as though she were debating whether or not to say what she was thinking. "And there's another thing that's been bothering me. Why put in the effort to track him down?"

"What?"

"If Xanatos wanted more robots, why not just build more Steel Clan? Why hunt down Coldstone, who had been missing for months, and could've been anywhere in the world by now?"

Hudson looked over at the young gold, catching on to what Jersey suspected. "You have an idea, lass?"

Darkly, Jersey looked over at the elder gargoyle, nodding slightly. "The only reason I can think of, is that he was planning to use Coldstone against us. You said Goliath showed him the tower before, and if Xanatos found out, he could just smash us during the day. And if that failed, what better spy than one of Goliath's rookery brothers?"

"You think he'd go that far?" Broadway asked, shaken by the thought that Coldstone was meant as an assassin.

"You think he wouldn't?" Jersey wondered, raising an eye ridge at Broadway. "As of now, we're the only ones that could possibly stop his war against Avalon, and he knew Coldstone was malfunctioning, so why not reformat him and use him to get to us?"

"So Coldstone was meant to kill us?"

"Or so it seems," Hudson added as an afterthought.

Broadway, shaken by this fact, sighed heavily, dwelling on the idea for a short time, before he happened to glance forward, where Coldstone had disappeared from view.

"Hey! Where'd he go?"

Hudson and Jersey, who were scanning the ground and behind them, jerked to attention, heads snapping around to find what Broadway had found, the missing gap in front of them where Coldstone had been moments ago.

"Oh no," Hudson moaned to himself.

"He was there just a second ago…" Broadway muttered, looking around him at the surrounding buildings to see if Coldstone had turned down one of the streets.

Jersey, being the lowest in altitude, shifted her wings to take her a bit lower, leading the way for Hudson and Broadway to follow. Suddenly, her arm shot out, one talon pointed at a specific rooftop. "Down there! I see him!" she crowed. "Third rooftop to the right."

Following her gaze, Hudson and Broadway saw what Jersey saw, the small, yet identifiable figure of gray and red sprinting across the rooftop towards a door.

"We can't let him go," Hudson said, stating the obvious, as he took the lead, folding his wings enough to overshoot Jersey and begin diving down towards Coldstone's roof. Following the appointed leader, Jersey and Broadway followed, both secretly hoping that Coldstone was in a reasonable mood.

Coldstone, having noticed the three gargoyles following him only minutes ago, was in a full sprint, having misjudged his landing and landed further away from the door than intended. Hoping to lose them in the maze of the building, Coldstone was headed towards the door when he happened to look up and see the three figures diving down towards him out of the sky. He turned around to face them, though at the same time he kept backing up towards the door.

"No…stay away! Go back! We won't let you take us! But they are our clan. We have no clan…but we have no where else to go…BETTER RUNNING THAN DEAD!" Coldstone roared, tearing at his hair with his metal talons, and then extending his arm and readying the laser cannon. Without hesitation, Coldstone open fired into the air, aiming towards the three airborne gargoyles.

"WHOA!" Broadway yelped, stalling in the air enough to miss being shot. Hudson and Jersey, under similar fire, pulled a ninety-degree turn, each in the opposite direction, to avoid getting hit by a barrage of fire that hit just where they'd been flying moments earlier.

"Take him from different sides!" Jersey yelled to Broadway and Hudson, wheeling around to face Coldstone.

"Since when did you become leader?!" Broadway snapped, glaring at the young female, while at the same time, leaning to the right to avoid another blast.

"List to the lass!" Hudson said, righting himself after rolling out of the way of fire. "She's right! We're fighting three against three!"

Having already been split up into different directions, the three Manhattan clan members synchronized their attacks, each getting themselves in a position allowing for a direct line dive at Coldstone. One after the other, they dove, weaving a dance around any fire thrown their way. Coldstone, seeing the three come as one, suddenly panicked, his personalities conflicting as to who was the real threat.

"Watch out! They're coming from behind! No, the right! They attack from different sides! SHOOT THEM ALL!"

Firing madly, and in no particular direction, a hail of laser bolts came at the three gargoyles, all of which lacked precise aim, and were spaced out enough to easily dodge without running into another one. Jersey and Broadway, being the fastest and heaviest, respectively, were the first to engage Coldstone, the two of them leveling into a horizontal dive, aimed straight for Coldstone. Busy shooting at Hudson, who was still above him, Coldstone was unable to turn around in time to block the twin tackles, which hit him head on. The momentum from the dive and the combined strength from both gargoyles was enough to knock down the cyborg, and stun him long enough for them to get a decent hold on him.

"ERAH! NO!" Coldstone snarled, lifting his right arm, which had been left unrestrained, and aiming the cannon at Broadway's back. Unfortunately, the hazel brown foot of Hudson's was quick to pin the arm down before it was able to get high enough to fire. Not wanting to snap the cannon off his arm, Coldstone was forced to close the cannon as Hudson applied pressure to the forearm with his talons.

"Now lad," Hudson said calmly, staring down at the helpless Coldstone, pinned under the grip of Broadway and Jersey. "Why don't we try settling this like gargoyles?"

Seeing, for the first time, that he was helpless and yet they did not attempt to destroy him, Coldstone calmed slightly, and began to say something, but he only managed to open his mouth before Hudson let out a horrendous roar, and was thrown off of Coldstone's arm, and sent sprawling on the rooftop, a slight burn mark on his back.

"Wha-" Jersey began, looking from the downed Hudson up into the sky, only to be cut off, a bright bolt of red hailing towards her. She took the shot in the arm, the force knocking her back and into the door Coldstone had been aiming towards, enough to dent the door out of its frame.

Broadway, the only one left untouched, looked up, finding all too easily the source of the two shots. Silhouetted against the pale black sky, three metallic gargoyles, powered by jet engines, were racing towards their rooftop, accompanied by the red exo-frame Broadway knew all too well. All four of them had their laser cannons armed, and were shooting to complete the jobs they'd started with Jersey and Hudson. Abandoning Coldstone, Broadway raced to help up his friends before they were shot to death.

"Sorry boys and girl," Xanatos' voice chuckled from within the exo frame. "But I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut this little romp short."

Coldstone, freed from his pinned position, looked up at Xanatos and the steel clan, his eyes going wide with fear, and panic setting in. "You…you stay away! I won't go back! Never! We'll never surrender!"

The emotionless head piece of Xanatos' suit tilted to the side, as if unsure of what he'd just heard. "I wasn't aware I was offering a choice," he said simply, lifting his laser cannon aiming it directly at Coldstone's head, and pulling the trigger without even the slightest hesitation.

"NO!" Coldstone snarled, rolling over to one side to dodge the blast. Using the momentum, Coldstone lurched to his feet, and raced off the edge of the building, wings and engine flaring to life and carrying him away at maximum speed.

Like the programmed lackeys they were, the steel clan robots immediately took off after Coldstone, followed closely by Xanatos, until he stalled suddenly, and turned to face the three gargoyles, who were picking themselves up and regrouping. Glaring down at them, they returned the stares angrily.

"Consider this a warning," Xanatos hissed to them. "Stay out of this. It'll be much less painful in the end, for all of us." And with that, he was gone, before anyone could reply.

"We've got to go after him! We can't let Xanatos get Coldstone!" Broadway insisted, looking off in the direction of their departure.

"Aye," Hudson agreed, rubbing his head slightly and getting to his feet. "We'll try and cut him off. Lure them to where Xanatos' robots won't be able to fly so easily."

Jersey groaned, getting up, but instantly began studying the landmarks in the distance from where Coldstone and Xanatos had been heading. "Coldstone is heading towards the George Washington Bridge…but there's a construction site just before the exit to the bridge. He'll have to go right through it if he stays in a straight line from here."

"I know a short cut there!" Broadway beamed, recalling the layout of the city from his many nights of patrol. Leaping up on the ledge of the roof, he motioned to Jersey and Hudson behind him. "Follow me."

Watching Broadway take off, Jersey leaped out after him, with Hudson silently picking up the rear as they tailed after Xanatos.

_**Castle Wyvern  
South Tower**_

In the cover of darkness, the two gargoyles searching the interior of the south tower were virtually invisible, the only evidence being the occasional clank of metal as Brooklyn shoved aside the broken remains of the equipment, digging through the wreckage of the lab. Lex had barely moved from his position at the main computer, where he had connected his laptop and hacked into the damaged computer.

"Anything yet?" Brooklyn asked, tossing aside an unidentified charcoal piece that had once been a machine.

Lex sighed, shaking his head and staring at the computer screen. "The main computer was fried, but I managed to scrape together a few of the back up files. I haven't found much so far, but…wait a minute."

Brooklyn, abandoning his futile search for salvageable equipment, peered over Lex's shoulder, watching Lex scroll back up the screen through the partially encrypted techno-babble, and select one particular file near the top. "What is it?"

Lex's jaw dropped and his eyes went wide as he read the open file, a certain hint of recognition in his expression. "No way…it's the virus."

"Virus?"

"You know, the one that attacked Coldstone last spring. It's been altered, but I'd recognize that readout anywhere."

"So what's Xanatos doing with it?"

Lex shook his head. "Who knows. But if this is what he used to wipe out Coldstone's programming, then maybe…" he trailed off, typing in commands on the keyboard. There was a momentary silence where all that was heard was the clicking of keys, broken only when Lex let out an aggravated groan. "Oh that's just great."

"What now?"

"The program is encrypted. It originated from another source, probably a copy from Xanatos' main hard drive."

"So what? Can't you download it and de-encrypt it later?" Brooklyn wondered.

"Well yeah, but I don't think its just the virus we have to worry about. This is probably what's been making his programming unstable, but it wouldn't affect the souls unless something magical was involved," Lex muttered.

"Great, so not only do we need an anti-virus, but also a magic book," Brooklyn snarled, throwing up his arms in aggravation.

"Just start looking for books that could have something magical in them. Maybe Macbeth will be willing to help us out and translate a few of them," Lex sighed, tapping a key on his laptop to initiate the download.

Without further arguement, Brooklyn started shuffling through the debris of the room, sorting through the overturned tables and the littered electronics. It was almost by accident that he noticed the small bookshelf off in the corner under a scorched piece of metal.

"Hellooooo, what have we here?" he crooned, thumbing through the leather bound manuals, searching for anything that could remotely resemble a magical spell. Three in particular caught his eye. "Its times like this I wish I'd kept up on my Latin."

"You find something?"

The brick red gargoyle flipped through the aged pages in one of the books. "Could be. It'll take me awhile to translate them though."

_TSSSSEEEEEEEW!_

"Whoa!" Lex and Brooklyn yelped, seeing the red laser blast fly by and hit the wall just above the main computer between them. Turning around as one, they were greeted by the figure of a steel clan standing in the small window, its arm bearing a smoking laser cannon. Hearing two more loud thuds, Brooklyn looked up, seeing two more steel clan peering down through the holes in the roof.

"Oh great…the party's here," Brooklyn snarled, glaring at the steel clan angrily, a low growl emitting from his throat.

Suddenly, the three robots open fired on the two cornered gargoyles, though with their quick reflexes and agility, Brooklyn and Lex were able to dodge most of the shots. Unfortunately, when the steel clan aimed at Lex, they were also aiming at the laptop and the virus program. One shot came so close that it actually destroyed the screen on the main computer, just feet away from laptop itself.

"Keep them away from the computer! I've almost got it!" Lex yelled to Brooklyn, returning to the laptop and typing away madly, his talons flying over the keys.

Turning around to glare at Lex, Brooklyn groaned, while throwing a destroyed metal chair up at one of the robots leaning in through the holes in the roof. "Easier said than done."

"Just keep them occupied until I start up the program!" Lex said, keeping at his work.

Sighing as he whirled around to face the steel clan in the window, Brooklyn's eyes flared a bright white, and he bared his teeth angrily. "Hold these," Brooklyn muttered, dumping the three old books with Lex as he took up a position between his rookery brother and the robots. "Alright, Bolt Boys. Let's dance."

Breaking into a wolf-like gate, the steel clan only managed in a few poor shots before Brooklyn pounced on him, talons sinking into metal skin, the momentum and added weight of a two hundred pound gargoyle offsetting the robot's balance on the window sill, and toppling it backwards and out the window. Tearing a hole in the side of the robot's chest to ensure its destruction, Brooklyn sprang off the robot, using it as a means to get airborne, just before it hit the ground below and erupted into a ball of flame and debris. Now in the air, Brooklyn soared back up to the tower to take on the other two.

_**Downtown Manhattan  
Grande Hotel Construction Site**_

Coldstone had a decent lead on the robots from the start, but it seemed that the more loops and diversions he took, the closer they got to him. By the time he'd reached the construction site, they were biting at his heels, and all the while his personalities continued to argue.

"This is all, your fault. If we had just stayed with the clan…they would have destroyed us. They are the only ones we can trust…you fool, they will destroy us on sight! You have no proof…They attacked us! What more proof do you need?" Coldstone snapped at himself.

Behind him, Xanatos laughed, hearing the debate through the enhanced audio sensors in his exo-frame. "This is all very fascinating, Coldstone, but I think its time I finished what I started," Xanatos yelled to Coldstone, who looked back over his shoulder, eyes wide with fear as he watched Xanatos and the steel clan arm themselves again and aim for him. "And if that means rebuilding you from scratch, then I guess that will have to do."

As one, the three robots open fired on Coldstone, a barrage of laser fire flying in his direction. Resorting to evasive maneuvers, Coldstone managed to dodge a few of the shots, but they were so close together that barrel rolling out of the path of one shot sent him directly into that of another.

"GAH!" Coldstone roared, taking the shot in the back, his jet engine stalling suddenly.

He fell a few feet before righting himself and restarting the engine, too focused on escaping to notice that the engine was sparking, having taken the hit full on, and been damaged. The sparking quickly became a steady short circuit, alerting Coldstone just before its circuit breakers blew, instantly shorting out the engine and crippling Coldstone's flight. Unable to fly with the stiff metal wings or catch any updrafts the way normal gargoyles did, Coldstone fell from the sky like a rock, plummeting to the ground below, where it seemed certain that he would hit and be destroyed, until a familiar teal gargoyle swooped down beneath him, intercepting his fall and catching him before he hit ground.

"Gotcha!" Broadway exclaimed, soaring up on an updraft with Coldstone in hand.

Mentally snarling, Xanatos glared at Broadway through the exo-frame's helmet, as he made his way up and onto a nearby rooftop, setting down the injured Coldstone. Angered, Xanatos took aim at Broadway, ignoring the fact that the other two were still unaccounted for, when it suddenly occurred to Xanatos where the other two gargoyles actually were, and whirled around to find the two missing warriors behind him, and inches from his face. Jersey, the closest, was aimed directly at Xanatos, while Hudson was aimed for the steel clan on his right.

"ARRAAAWWWWWRRR!" Jersey shrieked, tackling Xanatos from above, pinning him in such a position that when they hit the roof below, Xanatos would be on the bottom and take the brunt of the fall. Hudson, just behind her, tackled the steel clan robot, using his weight and momentum to perform a similar move.

Thinking quickly, Xanatos flared his jet engine, managing to propel himself out of Jersey's grip just before he would've hit the roof. Actually scraping the ground with a wingtip, Jersey lost her grip on Xanatos, and hit the ground, landing on all fours to prevent injury. The steel clan robot, on the other hand, lacking the human intelligence and resourcefulness, hit head on, cushioning Hudson's landing. To finish the job, Hudson's sword had already made its mark, slicing the head in half.

Recovering from the attack, Xanatos and the remaining two steel clan robots took to higher ground, stopping only to glare down at the group of gargoyles.

"I warned you not to interfere!" Xanatos snarled.

"We are a clan. You attack one of us, you attack us all," Jersey hissed back.

Behind the protection of Broadway, Hudson, and Jersey, Coldstone stood there, perplexed by what had just happened. "What are they…you fool, they're trying to protect us! They are not our enemies, Xanatos is! How can you be sure…They just saved our life!"

Xanatos groaned under his breath, and opened a compartment on his left forearm. "This has gone on long enough. I offered you the easy way out, but you apparently want to do this the hard way."

Pressing a series of buttons on the open compartment, the robots suddenly went berserk, firing intense barrages of laser fire at the rooftop, abandoning their previous targeting of non-fatal wounds.

"Scatter!" Jersey snapped, scurrying out of the way of a line of bolts.

"Is he mad?" Coldstone asked no one. "He'll kill us all!"

In the air, Xanatos grinned to himself. "Exactly."

_**Castle Wyvern  
South Tower**_

Steel clan, it turned out, were very easy to distract and lead away. To lose them, however, was not so easy, as Brooklyn discovered. Having taken the fight outside the tower, he was allowing Lex the needed time to do whatever he needed to do with the virus program, but unfortunately, Brooklyn was beginning to tire, and the steel clan were not.

"Lex, hurry up!" Brooklyn shouted, landing on the window sill momentarily to catch his breath. "I don't know how much longer I can hold them off!"

"Just a few more minutes…"

Unable to stay there very long, Brooklyn was prompted back into the air by a very close call shot to his feet. Snapping his wings upwards, Brooklyn circled around and over the roof, avoiding fire all the way from the steel clan behind him, unaware that the other steel clan was no where in sight, until it dove down, tackling Brooklyn in mid air, and crashing him into the weakened roof of the tower.

"OOOOFFF!" Brooklyn grunted, falling through the roof with the steel clan on top of him.

"WHAAA!" Lex yelped, nearly ending up underneath Brooklyn when he came crashing down onto the floor. Jumping back just in time to avoid getting caught underneath his falling rookery brother, Lex scrambled back, pressing himself against the far wall to avoid the struggle going on between Brooklyn and the robot, until he saw the laptop teetering on the edge of the broken main computer, threatening to fall. "NO! The computer!"

Racing forward, Lex grabbed the laptop just as it toppled off the edge, catching it before it hit the ground and broke. Brooklyn, catching sight of this out of the corner of his eye, managed to utter a, "Nice catch." As he wrestled with the steel clan, shoving it back towards the other end of the room.

Quickly returning to the encrypted program, Lex began typing where he was laying, not even bothering to get to his feet, not seeing the second steel clan drop in through the shattered roof, and take aim at Lex, whose head was crouched behind the laptop.

Brooklyn, after impaling the head of the steel clan he was wrestling with on a twisted metal pipe, heard the thud of metal feet hitting stone floor, and turned around, seeing the steel clan take aim at Lex. "NO!" he cried, trying to get Lex's attention. "Lex! Get up!"

Lex, looking up above the brim of the laptop, froze upon seeing the muzzle of the laser cannon pointed at him, unable to move. He actually thought he'd been hit, feeling a dull impact and then a blast of heat as the laser cannon fired, but he soon realized that Brooklyn had tackled him out of the way just as the steel clan fired, saving Lex's life, but sacrificing the computer, as the blast destroyed the laptop in one quick flash of light.

"NO!" Lex roared, watching the computer burn in flames. "The virus!"

"Come on, Lex," Brooklyn said, getting up from the ground after the debris of falling stone and technology passed. Grabbing the smoldering books, Brookly began heading towards the window.

"But the virus!"

"Forget the virus! We'll have to find another way!" Brooklyn growled, leaping out of the window.

Lex glanced back at the burning laptop and thoroughly trashed computer, and then followed Brooklyn out the window, persuaded by a few shots from the steel clan in his direction. Catching up quickly, the two gargoyles flew at top speed away from the tower, expecting the steel clan to follow, but to their surprise, it merely followed them until the edge of the castle, and then turned away and returned to the castle interior, apparently having been programmed to protect the castle, rather than hunt and destroy. Out of immediate danger, Brooklyn and Lex began the solemn flight back to the tower, hoping that the others were having better luck than them.

_**Downtown Manhattan  
Grande Hotel Construction Site**_

The battle had erupted into a full scale dogfight, an aerial dance of laser fire, flesh and metal wings, and building supports. The steel clan, lacking the intelligence to know that the gargoyles were leading them into a maze where their agility would give them an upper hand, the steel clan followed them into the construction tower. Quickly, the gargoyles managed to take out another of the robots, leaving only Xanatos and one other against the three of them.

"Give it up, Xanatos!" Hudson snarled, landing on the rooftop where Coldstone had taken refuge. "You can't fight all of us at once."

To further prove their point, Jersey and Broadway, having trapped the last steel clan somewhere in the maze of construction equipment, landed beside the elder warrior, each taking a predator-like stance. Xanatos, seeing the odds stacked against him, studied the situation, then suddenly smiled behind the cover of his helmet, seeing Coldstone standing behind them, looking bewildered by what was going on, but more importantly, he saw that Coldstone's engine was smoking slightly, the nearly invisible fumes rising from his back.

"Perhaps not," Xanatos said, keeping their attention to him. "But I can fight against one of you."

_TSSSSEEEEWWWWW!_

_TSSSSEEEEWWWWW!_

Two things happened at once. Xanatos, in one quick movement, fired a shot at the three gargoyles, which easily missed them all, while at the same time, the remaining steel clan flew up behind Coldstone, and fired, aimed at the smoking engine. With no armor to protect it, the engine took a direct hit, and the impact set off a chain reaction within Coldstone.

"GAAAAHHHHH!" Coldstone roared, feeling the explosion tear him apart from the inside out. The domino effect triggered an explosion, blowing off his right arm and wing, and shattering most of his back.

"COLDSTONE!" Broadway cried out, trying to come to Coldstone's aide.

Collapsing in a heap, Broadway, Hudson, and Jersey went to his side, attempting to do what they could to contain the damage and help Coldstone, much to Xanatos' delight. Looking across the way at the steel clan, he muttered simply, "Finish them," and then took off into the night.

Following his master's orders, the steel clan aimed at the gargoyles, firing into them and clipped Jersey's shoulder, sending her skidding back across the rooftop until she came to a stop near the edge.

"Look out lass!" Hudson barked, running to help her.

Shaking off the shock and pain from the shot, Jersey glared up at the steel clan, her eyes flaring an angry red as she leapt to her feet and kicked off the building, spreading her wings as soon as she was in the air. Watching this, the steel clan turned and chased after her, its attention focused on the fleeing gargoyle as opposed to the stationary ones. Glancing back behind her to make sure the steel clan was following, Jersey collapsed her wings, diving into the construction site, with the steel clan just behind her. Continuing on the suicide dive, it seemed Jersey was going to crash into the ground, but at the last second, wings flared ever so slightly and with a practiced ease, she broke out of the dive and skimmed above the ground, dodging the planks and beams set up along the ground level. The steel clan, lacking the agility and reaction time Jersey had, seemed to make an attempt to pull out of the dive, but unfortunately, in vain, as just seconds behind Jersey, the steel clan hit the ground, exploding in a rush of flame and metal parts.

"It's amazing how stupid these things are," Jersey muttered to herself, catching a thermal outside the construction tower and soaring back up into the open air.

Within a minute, she was back on the roof where she'd left the others, and found them still waiting, alive, but solemn. Landing softly, Jersey looked over to Broadway, who was helping up the injured Coldstone, who seemed more dead than alive.

"Is he…" Jersey stammered, afraid of the answer.

Surprisingly, Coldstone answered. "No…I ammmmmmmmm…fine…" he started, but suddenly his expression blanked, and a more automated and mechanical voice took over. "Internal repairs offline. External damage extensive. Requires immediate repair." Returning to his normal voice, he looked up at the three gargoyles apologetically. "I amamamamamam sorry. We dii-i-i-id not know…"

"It's okay," Broadway assured him.

"Come on, lad," Hudson said softly, placing a hand on Coldstone's remaining shoulder. "We'd best return home."

Grabbing Coldstone underneath his one arm, Hudson let the injured cyborg lean on him for support as Broadway grabbed Coldstone around the waist, both helping him shuffled to the edge of the building. Jersey, the only one not involved with helping Coldstone, turned around sadly, and glanced up at where Xanatos had been earlier. Suddenly, something popped into her head, setting off the warning bells like crazy.

"The easy way?" she wondered to herself, eyeing the direction Xanatos had disappeared to suspiciously. Catching up to Broadway and Hudson, she called out, "Hold on a sec," to stop them from taking off.

"What is it lass?" Hudson asked, glancing at the young gold over his shoulder.

Jersey, approached Coldstone from Broadway's side, and then began searching the virtually untouched left side that had been spared. "Just a thought," she muttered, studying Coldstone intently. Coldstone, looking down at her, was suddenly curious.

"W-w-w-what do you see?"

Saying nothing, Jersey kept looking at supposedly nothing, until she suddenly reached out and pulled something out from underneath Coldstone's broken chest plate. "Aha! Thought so," she said, easily tearing off the wires it was connected to. She held it out for everyone to see. "Some sort of tracking device."

"So that's how he found him," Broadway realized. "But, how did you know about it?"

"Xanatos kept saying there was an easy way out, and we chose the hard way. If the hard way was shooting us with a laser cannon, then the easily way was probably to shatter us during the day. The tracker would lead him straight to us as soon as it was daylight," she said. Then she added, "Xanatos tried the same trick on me."

Hudson grinned at Jersey. "Quick thinking lass."

"I amamamam gra-a-a-ateful for your help," Coldstone said to the gold gargoyle.

Jersey smiled back as she crushed the tracking device in her hand. "Don't mention it. Let's just go home."

Leading the way, Jersey leapt off the building, followed at a distance by Hudson and Broadway, each using one wing to carry Coldstone, who was situated between them, slowly making their way back to the clock tower. Silently, the three gargoyles hoped that Brooklyn and Lex had found a way to fix all this.

_**Clock Tower  
23**__**rd**__** Precinct**_

"What happened to you guys?" was the first thing Brooklyn managed to say when the three of them returned with Coldstone. Not only did they look tired, and sported slight burn marks, but Coldstone, who had been fine when they'd last seen him, was nearly destroyed.

His right arm and wing were completely gone, and wires were sticking out of his right side, while his back was a mess, missing the engine, and bearing multiple scarring from the twisted metal that was once his armor. His tail was missing the clubbed end, and he was covered in tears and scrapes. Leaning on Broadway and Hudson for support, it didn't seem like Coldstone was even able to stand on his own.

"Xan-xan-xan-atos…" Coldstone managed to stammer out, his speech garbled by whatever internal damage had been inflicted.

"Tell me you guys had better luck finding a cure," Broadway said, letting Coldstone lean against the banister of the balcony.

Unfortunately, what the three had hoped to be a positive yes, turned out to be an unnervingly silent sigh, and a sad glance at the each other. Finally, Brooklyn stepped forward to explain.

"All the records of the virus were destroyed. So an anti-virus is out of the question. This was all we could find. We're not sure it'll be enough."

"Then…we can't help him?" Jersey asked, as if she hadn't heard right.

Lex shyly stepped up from behind Brooklyn. "Well, there is something I can do," he said softly.

"Wh-wh-wh-what can you do?" Coldstone stammered, looking down at Lex.

Taking a deep breath, Lex turned to face Coldstone, and addressed him directly. "You're shutting down, Coldstone. Your system can't handle the damage you've sustained _and _the internal damage the virus is causing. And without an anti-virus or a counterspell, I have no way of fixing you. The best I can do for you is to put you in a dormant sleep mode until we can find a way to fix you. Otherwise, your body will shut down, and your programming will be wiped out. We don't know what that'll do to your souls."

"It's your choice, and yours alone." Brooklyn said. "We'll go along with whatever you choose."

Coldstone stood there for a moment, letting it sink in. Glancing down at what was left of his right side, he looked up at the five gargoyles around him, and actually smiled when he looked back at Lex.

"Do what you must, Lexington. I will trust our life to you."

Looking to Brooklyn as if to ask permission, Brooklyn nodded to Lex. "Do it."

Sighing, Lex approached Coldstone and opened the remains of his chest panel. Digging through the wires, Lex crossed the necessary ones and separated those that needed to be, jumping back slightly when a light moaning could be heard, as Coldstone's internal systems became dormant, and he shut down, slumping slightly when he was completely shut down into the sleep mode.

"It's done."

"Come on then," Brooklyn sighed, taking Coldstone's arm and wrapping it around his shoulders. "Let's move him somewhere safe."

Several hours later, the sunlight was beginning to arrive, turning the gray black sky to a pale blue-gray haze. It was then that Matt finally managed to make it back up to the tower. When he arrived, he found four of the clan sitting around the clock tower, minus Brooklyn. None were doing anything, except looking tired and sad. Jersey, Hudson, and Lex, he noted, had bandages around various limbs, as though they'd been injured sometime earlier than night.

"Morning," he said softly, sensing the solemn mood. "Thought you guys would like to know, they've dropped the search for the 'monsters' that ransacked Kang's market. They blamed it on some renegade robots they found near the Grande Hotel construction site. Or what was left of them. Looked something like…"

"Steel clan?" Broadway interrupted.

Matt, stunned that he'd guessed right, only stared. "Uh…yeah. How'd you know?" Suddenly the dots connected. "You guys weren't there, were you?"

The four gargoyles only remained silent, their stares kept to the floor.

"We were around," Lex said hoarsely, toying with the broken scanner glasses he picked up off his workbench.

"Man, what happened to you guys? And where's Coldstone? I thought Brooklyn said he was bringing him back here."

Jersey lifted her head slightly, keeping her gaze to the wall as she answered Matt. "He's safe," she said vaguely. Just then, Brooklyn, who'd been placing Coldstone into the storage room, came out, seeing Matt talking to the others. Not wanting to talk to the detective now, he quietly slipped out of the tower, escaping to the balcony.

Hudson, always keeping one eye open, noticed Brooklyn's departure, and nonchalantly followed unnoticed. When he'd reached the balcony, Brooklyn was on the far right side, leaning over the edge of the railing, arms crossed and elbows resting on the banister as he stared out over the city.

"You alright lad?" Hudson asked, once out of ear shot of the other three and Matt.

"How do you manage to put up with it?" Brooklyn asked without turning around. "If I'd know being leader meant pulling the plug like that…" Brooklyn stopped, sighing heavily and running his talons through his hair as he turned to Hudson. "We may never find a way to fix him, Hudson. He may never wake up again."

"It's never an easy task to do what must be done," Hudson said simply.

Scoffing, Brooklyn half-heartedly chuckled. "No kidding."

Hudson paused for a moment before continuing, trying to find a way to say what he wanted to. Finally, he just said it. "This may not be the time to say…but I think it's time you started thinking about choosing a new second-in-command."

"What?"

"You're our leader, and yuv done a fine job of it, but sooner or later, you're going to have to choose your second. I won't be here forever."

Again, the heavy sigh. "I was hoping it wouldn't come to that," Brooklyn admitted. "That Goliath would be back before I had to."

Putting a hand reassuringly on Brooklyn's shoulder, Hudson turned to walk back inside the tower. "Yuv got three able-bodied warriors who'll all make fine seconds. Take your time."

"Yeah. One of the _perks_ of being leader."

"One of the duties as well," Hudson added just before disappearing back into the tower.

Left to himself, Brooklyn let out yet another exasperated sigh, and rested his head on his arms, staring sadly down below him. Not really caring that he was alone, Brooklyn simply stood there, letting the stone sleep overtake him. One would think rest would be a welcome thing, but even rest, it seemed, had a price.

* * *

_Gargoyles (c) Buena Vista  
Original Characters (c) me_


End file.
